Since the onset of the credit crunch and global downturn, governments everywhere have responded to the shortfall in aggregate demand in a textbook Keynesian fashion. They have adopted fiscal stimuli: ramping up government expenditures and cutting taxes. Central banks followed the lead of the Federal Reserve by driving down short-term interest rates toward zero: almost exactly zero for overnight interbank rates in the US, Japan, and Canada, and generally less than 1 per cent in Europe into the autumn of this year. Read more

How did the world economy fall into such a deep hole? It is recovering, but painfully, and after a deep recession, despite unprecedented monetary and fiscal easing. Moreover, how likely is it that a balanced world economy will emerge from this force-feeding? The very fact that such drastic action has been necessary is terrifying. The fact that there is little room for a policy encore is yet more terrifying. Most terrifying of all is that this is not the first time in recent decades the world economy has had to be guided through a post-bubble collapse. Read more

Japan‘s economic expansion stumbled by late 2007, and in the context of the global economic crisis, it has been trapped in the deepest recession of the post-war era. Initially, the impact of the global crisis on the Japanese economy was expected to be limited because Japanese banks and other financial institutions were relatively insulated from financial turmoil. However, between the third quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of this year, Japan’s exports fell at an annual rate of some 55 per cent in volume terms, the sharpest among OECD countries and double the area’s average rate of decline.

About a month ago, I visited the aero engine factory of Rolls-Royce, in Derby. I was hugely impressed. Making jet engines able to work at extreme temperatures is an extraordinary achievement. Why does the financial industry not work this way? How might we bring the performance of finance close to that of other sophisticated businesses? Read more

A year ago, at the height of the financial panic, the world yearned for a profitable and confident financial sector. It now has what it wants, but hates it. As joblessness soars and the hopes of hundreds of millions of people are blighted, the financial sector’s survivors are thriving. Even bonuses are back. Policymakers have made a Faustian bargain. Success feels like failure. Read more

According to a widely-held consensus view, the world is slowly emerging from the Great Recession of 2008. Growth in China is projected to top 8 per cent in 2009. Australia raised the interest rate on the Australian dollar last week and the US and UK economies are showing signs that unemployment growth has slowed even though the unemployment rates in both countries are very high. Sometime soon, perhaps in the spring of 2010, perhaps earlier, the Fed, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of England are likely to respond to the perceived global recovery by reducing the sizes of their balance sheets and raising interest rates on overnight loans. Read more

The national authorities and the international community should be commended for the speed of action taken to stop the spread of the financial crisis. To protect the financial system from the deflation in asset bubbles, the public sector has essentially guaranteed all deposits, rescued systemically important institutions, made large liquidity injections and brought interest rates to zero or near zero under a zero interest rate policy. Almost all systemically important central banks entered into ZIRP under emergency conditions at the same time.

But the polices adopted to combat the crisis are creating their own problems. In the medium term, the treatment may be as expensive as the crisis. Read more

It is the season of dollar panic. These panic-mongers are varied: gold bugs, fiscal hawks and many others agree that the dollar, the dominant currency since the first world war, is on its death bed. Hyperinflationary collapse is in store. Does this make sense? No. All the same, the dollar-based global monetary system is defective. It would be good to start building alternative arrangements. Read more